How 'blind reporting' buried 1400 child sex cases

Hundreds of cases of child sex abuse going back decades may be reopened after the Catholic Church publicly abandoned a controversial practice known as blind reporting.

Blind reporting occurs when an organisation passes on an allegation of child sex abuse, but strips the report of the name of the victim, meaning police are unable to investigate the report.

NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge has obtained documents under Freedom of Information (FOI) laws that, for the first time, reveal the extraordinary extent of blind reporting, which has potentially allowed hundreds of perpetrators to continue to abuse children.

The ABC has spoken to child sex abuse victims who are angry the allegations they reported to the Catholic Church some years ago were never fully reported to police.

The figures obtained by Mr Shoebridge reveal during the past eight years, NSW Police have received 1,476 blind reports from NSW organisations.